VOLUNTEERING - Hodei Ontoria (Bilbao, Basque Country)
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- Created on Monday, 06 March 2017 09:12
- Written by basquecountry
VOLUNTEERING- Hodei Ontoria
Volunteering is generally considered an altruistic activity where an individual or group provides services for no financial gain "to benefit another person, group or organization”. Volunteering is also renowned for skill development and is often intended to promote goodness or to improve human quality of life. Volunteering may have positive benefits for the volunteer as well as for the person or community served. It is also intended to make contacts for possible employment. Many volunteers are specifically trained in the areas they work, such as medicine, education, or emergency rescue. Others serve on an as-needed basis, such as in response to a natural disaster.
There are a lot of reasons to be a volunteer, such as volunteering encourages civic responsibility, or it promotes personal growth and self-esteem and also it brings people together making a best society and a best planet for all of us.
First, I consider that you have to think in how lucky you are to be born in a country with no wars, no big epidemics, a social health care… and we complained because we don’t have the newest phone, when in the other side of the world there are a lot of millions of persons with absolutely nothing in their life, with a lot of wars, with and epidemics and no social health care… And in my opinion the fairest thing is go there and help that people with our technology, with our knowledge, and with our happiness and with our self-esteem.
That is why this summer I am going with an NGO to Kolkata to help in an orphanage, because I could also be one of they, I could also had had born in the poorest region of India, so I joined in “Voluntarios en el Mundo” to be all me summer there, teaching some class to the children and playing with they, passing with they the days.
I know that It is a strong cultural change, because the religion, traditions and the situation of the society, the poorest person that I could have seen is the normal person there, so, It is a very hard change. I know that I going to see some situations what they are going to change my way of life, and because that I want to go there, because I want to improve as a human, I want to be less material, less as we are at the “1st world” (I don’t like separate our world in three, as three different categories, form the best one to last one) and be more human.
Don’t you ever though that we are as robots? I mean, since we born, we are like programed, to try to have a good job, to be happy, and to have money, and fame. We can turn on right know the TV and we will see some reality (Big Brother, Gandia Shore, Kardashian…), people with no studies, people with no knowledge; making a lot of money, having fame, and the society see that as the ideal of life. So our society it is no directed to be good in your studies, to be polite, to help each other… and we are proud of that, we sincerely embarrass.
Even at the school and at home (just at some), our teachers, and parents and family teach us to help, giving a lot of examples, since the oldest one to the newest (Gandhi, Martin Luther King…), you see that it is not true, at the moment that you say at home: “Mum I’m going this summer to India to help children” you will see their faces, not good faces, because complain at home about how bad is the world is perfect, but go there to help, and to try to change the live of some kids.
So I think that you have to be so brave to go to another different country, alone, with people that you don’t know, and face all the problems that you are going to have before go, and after go.
Another big problem of the volunteering, is the cost of it, I mean, it is something no really cheap, first, you have to pay to the NGO to feed you and more thinks, and then you have to pay your flights, and as all of us know, book a flight to go to the other side of the world it is no cheap, it is expensive.
Now days the most common volunteering is: go to Africa with the poorest people to their villages, but I think that sometimes that kind of volunteering it is not doing in the correct way and we try to change their way of live, giving our technology, our material lifestyle, in the twinkling of an eye, when in our society that change was with a lot of centuries in the middle; in my view the correct form would be improve their lifestyle, without any big change, giving water, food, and the knowledge to can do it by their self, in that way someday all the village would be able to do it alone without help, and having their own process in develop.
Another common volunteering is in South America; these countries are very especial in mi opinion, they have some advances of the most develop countries, they have one of the most important languages of the world, but it is like if there is something or someone who don’t let these countries to develop. First they were an Spaniard cologne, after a revolution they won the independent, but they star with a political problems and in some years practically all South America was a dictatorship (Cuba, Argentina, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador…) and after more revolutions in some countries arrives the “democracy”, but with a big problems in their society (drugs, murders, corruption, lack of food…), and that is way they need some help.
And the last type of volunteering id the volunteering of India. India is known to be one of the poorest countries of the hold world. After they won the independence (India was a cologne of Great Britain) they have a big differences, in the one hand you have very rich people, richer that any of us, and in the other hand you have the most poor people of the world, they have to live with no money, no means, but surrounded of riches, and this is too much unfair in my own view.